Role of self-care in bhakti – The Monk’s Podcast 101 with Sukhavaha Mataji and Gaur Kumar Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna, Shukohamata ji. Welcome to the Monks Podcast.
Thank you so much. Such an honour to have you with us. Since the first time I read your book on compassion, then we corresponded.
You wrote to me about my book of the Ramayana and you appreciated some of the points. And then we met in the Bhaktiand hospital and I read your book. I realised that you are filling a vital need in the devotee community for somebody who can act as a guide, a coach and a guide for devotees when they are practising the devotional life and facing various challenges.
Now, as devotees, we don’t want to go to life coaches in the outside world. At the same time, we have various needs, not just directly spiritual needs, but we have various needs which may not be automatically addressed while we are in the devotee community. So, when I travel across the world, I have also recommended several devotees who are having some difficulties to connect with you.
And many of the devotees who are connected with you, they have experienced immense relief and they felt it was like a new universe opening for them when they got the wisdom from you and the guidance from you. So, I have been for a long time desiring that you can share your wisdom on this Monks Podcast also. Thank you very much for joining today.
Hi, Krishna. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
And so, today we also have with us Gaurakumar Prabhu. He is one of the leaders in the Bhakti Centre and he’s also a very close friend of mine. And he works as the chair of the computer science department in the city of New York University.
Is that city? Yes. So, both of us will be discussing, asking some questions to Shukla Mataji together and then we’ll see how it goes today. So, firstly, maybe you could start with your journey.
So, how did you feel the need for say, what word do you use for self-care or say for caring for ourselves while practising bhakti? How did you yourself find the need for that? When I hit an identity crisis and a depression where I wanted to kill myself, I found that there was a need for something. That was pretty intense. And I found that the theory and the philosophy that had supported me for 27 years was no longer effective in me dealing with the circumstances of my life.
I felt at a complete loss and I didn’t really feel like the devotees around me, they could only offer me theoretical, you know, scriptural verses. And I knew those verses and they weren’t penetrating into my heart. And so, I started doing some studying.
I took various courses. I learned compassionate communication. I was just desperate.
And so, I just said, Krishna, you got to help me here. If you want me to get through this, you got to help me. So, he sent various modalities and I interspersed and worked on myself through all these different practises, which to me, connect up with our spiritual practise because our spiritual practise isn’t theoretical.
It’s actually a real practise. And so, we need to be able to practically apply it. And that’s what I try to offer.
And I don’t necessarily, I guess I give advice, but I don’t necessarily see myself as a person who gives advice. But I like open up a space where people feel at least safe to speak, that they can feel that their words will be heard confidentially, that they don’t have to fear that I’m going to judge them, and that we can look at what’s going on for them, not theoretically, but practically, what can we do that can move us forward out of whatever stuck place we’re in. So, it’s more like, and it’s custom designed for whatever person is going through whatever situation.
There are certain things that are relevant for everyone and certain things that are custom designed for individuals according to what place they’re in. So, my thought and I saw that there was a need, I saw that I couldn’t find anyone to help me. And since Krishna gave me so many tools, and so much support, I figured he wanted me to give back.
So, yes, that’s, that’s what I wanted. You’re just speaking this so cheerfully, but it must have been quite a traumatic experience to go through. It was intense.
Yeah. So, you know, I have also been over the years, before I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness, one of the main genre of books I would read was self-help books. And then I just left it all.
And then I started studying, studying our scriptures. And they were very, I would say, illuminating, enriching. But as you said that at a particular time, you start feeling that how does this translate into life? What do I do for that? So, I had tried to come up with like a visual model of Venn diagram.
I would like to share that with you briefly. And then we can move forward. And Gaur Kumar, at any time, feel free, you’re a part of the discussion, anytime you can chip in either with a comment or a question, whenever you feel like it.
Okay, while you’re pulling that up, I just want to thank Sukava Mataji, because I remember very clearly in 2015, when we went through some challenges in our personal lives, you really helped us, helped us in coaching, self-care. So, I’m immensely grateful that I’m having this opportunity to be able to ask some questions. And thank you, Mataji.
Yeah, you’re welcome. And I think really, you know, I think as we mature in spiritual life, we come up against, you know, maybe where it was that we left off in our last lifetime. And so, you know, we maybe make some rapid progress, but then we come up against a wall of kind of like, okay, now, how do I break through this? You know, because the illusory energy is so powerful, and we’ve deluded ourselves.
So, we need some extra support, sometimes to break through those walls. And then, oh, yeah, and then we can apply it back and see how it relates to our philosophy. It’s just Krishna wanting us to grow more and more.
True. Thank you. Yeah.
So, see, thank you for sharing that. So, this is, when I talk about three things, that’s textual spirituality, traditional spirituality and application of spirituality. Wow.
So, textual is basically, what does this, like you said, quoting verses, what does this mean? How does this verse flow into that verse? What are the various meanings of this word and that word? Then there is traditional spirituality is where the tradition, how the philosophy is translated by the tradition. That means a particular philosophy comes up, a particular worldview comes up, a specific set of practises come up, say worship the deities, chant the holy names, go to the holy places. So, we could say, often in our movement, we talk about this itself as application of spirituality.
But it’s more of that, we could call it traditional application. Okay. Application of spirituality is where we apply to transform ourselves.
So, for example, and the way I explain this is I have a full, where is it gone? Oh, I won’t go over the full presentation, but when I talk about application of spirituality, how can I lead a more meaningful and purposeful life? How can I become more understanding and forgiving? How can I manage my emotions? How can I connect better with myself, with others, with nature? Wow. How can I connect with the ultimate reality? How can I become grateful? Wow. Yeah.
This is often what is called a spiritual, but not religious, because people feel that sometimes this traditional spirituality, if it does not address their needs, see when people in today’s world want to become spiritual, they say, now they may not be interested in joining a particular tradition, or they may not be necessarily looking for a particular, what a particular text teaches. What they want to see is how it adds value to my life. Right.
So, my understanding is at the intersection of all these three circles, in this place, that is where Krishna, we can find Krishna. Now we can just study, we can study the text and we can get lost in the text. We can practise the tradition, but we have the sacrificial brahmanas who were doing the traditional rituals, but they lost Krishna.
Huh. And similarly, we can get, we can get according to applying, but again, Krishna. Wow.
Ultimately, we want to come here in the centre. Yeah, I like that. I want to be in the centre with Krishna.
Yeah. So, I mean, in that area where Krishna is, I want to be where Krishna is. Yeah.
Yeah, that’s true. So, any thoughts about this? Yeah, I think it’s actually, I like that chart and I can see the three different perspectives that you pointed out. And often we think, of course, our spirituality, our Krishna consciousness is one part of that, you know, and integrating the three parts sometimes seems overwhelming and confusing because there may seem to be some apparent contradictions, apparent, I’m going to say.
And that’s why we have to go to that inner middle triangular part, because that’s where all the contradictions are resolved and integrated into a actually, even though it’s a smaller part, it’s actually a wider thing that encompasses all of it and more. So, like that little part is the intersection, but actually in that little part is the potential to over encompass all of those parts and more because Krishna is everything and everywhere. Yeah, that’s beautiful.
Once you enter into that part, it’ll expand unlimitedly. But yeah. So, generally speaking, it is expected that the text, the textual and the traditional will automatically get us to that centre.
But sometimes we may not get there. And similarly, say when somebody is going into applied spirituality, they can go into areas which are actually not connected with Krishna also. So that’s also a danger.
Yeah. That also has to be avoided. Well, if you’re going to follow the Bhakti tradition.
Yeah. I mean, if you want to follow another tradition, you have the choice to do that. But yes, in Bhakti Yoga, we want to really have a holistic perspective.
We want to have a substance and support for us. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay.
Thank you. On that note, Mataji, I think as practising devotees, especially during the pandemic, I’ve seen that there’ve been a lot of tragedies that devotees have experienced, upsets and so on in ourselves and in others also. So how do we look at why these upsets are happening in spite of our devotional practises? They’re not happening in spite of our devotional practises.
They’re actually happening because we’re in the process of purification. And these upsets are the things that have to come up that we really need to work on. They’re actually part of our spiritual development.
They wouldn’t come up if they weren’t something that needed to be worked on. If it weren’t there, then we wouldn’t need to work on it. But if it’s there, it’s something that still needs to be worked on.
If we’re pure and equanimous and nothing upsets us, there’s nothing to work on. But if upsets are coming up, that means, okay, there you go. There’s your homework right in front of you.
Does that make sense? It comes up because it’s part of the process of making the ghee. The impurities come up to the top. There they are.
Now we can scrape them off. Before we couldn’t see them because they were all interspersed with the ghee. But now we can clearly see, oh wow, look at those impurities.
Wow, I didn’t see them before. There they are. So does that mean that it is okay for devotees to understand the needs and feelings that they have? And it’s not a waste of time to focus on the body and the mind when we should just focus only on the body.
Well, I tried that route of denying and neglecting the body for 27 years. And I did a pretty good job. I must say I produced a lot of results.
And yeah, and I was a good devotee. And I did all those things that a devotee is supposed to do the right way. And after 27 years, oh my gosh, huge amounts of anger came up.
And I’m like, what happened here? So I would say that how we do anything is how we do everything. So if we’re neglecting the asset of the body, the body is actually an asset. It’s our boat to get us across the material ocean.
Only in the human form of life can we actually reflect and choose and even transform our behaviours. Animals don’t have that ability. So this is an asset.
So it’s really about managing our asset and using our asset. And so we don’t want to mistreat the asset. If we mistreat it, then we’re not going to get the full use of it.
And we’re not going to get the full effect of its potential. We’re going to be using only a small portion of it. So the body, it’s our boat.
If we don’t take care of our health, you know, okay, we might die sooner. And maybe we want to die sooner. Okay.
But is that what Krishna wants? You know, they say that it’s not a long life that makes you spiritual. Okay. And it’s not a short life that makes you spiritual either.
What does Krishna want? You know, what does Krishna want? So taking care of our body is part of respecting. Oh, you gave me a gift, Krishna. Thank you very much.
Let me take care of this. I don’t want to mistreat it. Let me take care of it.
So that’s the body. And as far as the feelings and the needs go, I’ll say that every attachment we have, we have attachments in the material world, we can call them, you know, addictions, anarthas, you know, false ego, whatever we want to call them. We have attachments.
All attachments are emotional. If they were logical, we could just read the Bhagavad Gita and say, Oh, Bhagavad Gita says, I should detach from the mind. Okay, that’s logical.
Let me just detach from the mind. It’s simple. I need to detach from my mind.
Let me just do that. Why can’t I do that? Because I’m emotionally attached to my mind. So if we don’t deal with our emotions, emotions and attachment are very intimately connected, then I won’t be able to really let go.
And aversion is also emotional. When I’m averse to something, you can tell I’m averse to it. No, I don’t like that.
I know, I don’t want that. I’m averse, you can feel my energy, you can feel my emotion. So Bhagavad Gita tells us, we’re not, we don’t want to be attached or averse.
These are both attachments. Attachments are emotional. If we don’t deal with our emotions, we’re not going to really be able to let go of our attachments.
It’s true of any addiction. If you see all addictions, people who are addicts, say someone is smoking cigarettes. They know they’re killing themselves.
They might be on their death bed with lung cancer. I know people like this. And they’re smoking because they’re attached.
It’s their way of relieving stress. But of course, it causes more stress for the body, but they don’t know how to deal with their stress or their feelings. So they just go to the quick fix, which kills them.
So we do this on different levels in different ways. We all have our addictions, whether subtle or gross. And the subtle ones are sometimes more dangerous than the gross ones, because we can’t see them.
And so they hide for a while. Anyway, I talk about some of this in my new book. Yes, please take time to share.
Maybe you could, I would like to reflect on some of what you said, but since you brought it up, can you tell us a little bit about your book and what is it about? When is it likely to come out? Okay, well, the book was so long. It’s called The Gap. Some truth about the lies we tell ourselves.
And the book was so long that I was, it was suggested to me by a few devotees that I cut it in half. And I didn’t quite know. I wasn’t sure how to divide it.
And so now I found a clean break in the topics. So the first part is about the mind and the false ego. And the second part is about the anarchists and kind of how to deal with the anarchists.
So it clearly talks about all of these things that we’re talking about in a analytical and a practical way to kind of give us a full scope of it. So that’s like the short version of it. So the first book is called The Gap.
Some truth about the lies we tell ourselves. And the part two is called Entering the Gap. More truth about the lies we tell ourselves.
So it’s a much more broader application as compared to, say, a book on compassion. It’s focused on one thing. Now it is, you’re actually addressing the entire gamut of a devotee’s life and how that devotee can grow holistically, as you mentioned earlier.
Something. It’s holistic and then it gets some specific parts. But it covers a lot of topics and a lot of territory just to give kind of the holistic perspective.
And, yeah, like. Yeah, I don’t know exactly what I call it, but yeah, it has a lot. There’s a lot in it.
I tried to put it all in one book because I wanted to get it out of my head and on paper. And anyway. Yeah.
So, you know, a couple of things about what you mentioned earlier, that generally, even I, when I grew up in my spiritual life, there was a fear and a suspicion about reading any books other than our traditions books and that to even specifically Prabhupada’s books. The fear is that one might get deviated by those, by reading those books. The suspicion is that these are not necessarily what, these are all people as I’ll put it in scare quotes, who have written it.
What do they know? I know there was one self-help book which I had read before I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness and I had found it very helpful at that time. But when I started practising bhakti and then I talked with a devotee about that book and the devotee’s response was, that person is a cow flesh eater. Do you think he can teach you anything of value? So, I didn’t know how to respond to that at that time.
But I felt, I’m just giving that as a sample of the cursory way in which at one time, not only was all other wisdom considered unnecessary, but it was also seen as sometimes contaminating. Now I look back and see it’s a very short-sighted way of looking at things. But I have my answers about this, but I would like to hear what do you think about this? Well, I just like to say in a practical matter, if we have a problem with our computer, right, we might take it to a computer expert.
Now in India, you have tonnes of devotees who are computer experts. We might be able to take it to a devotee. Maybe in America, we don’t have so many such things, but you might even take it to a computer store.
Or if you have trouble with your phone, you might take it to the company where you got the phone and they can help you to sort out things. You have a construction problem. You might not know a devotee who’s into construction.
You might consult with a construction expert, an engineer who knows how to do engineering, maybe an architect who knows how to do design. And if you have a medical problem or you broke your wrist and you don’t know any devotee doctors, you might go to a doctor who can fix your broken bone. So, you know, we don’t have trouble accessing information on these areas, but somehow when we think it’s interfering with our spiritual perspective, we get a little nervous.
Now, to me, you know, it could get diverting if maybe you’re really young in your Krishna conscious practise. It could be diverting. It’s really all according to our desire.
You know, really Krishna fulfils our desires. So if we want to be diverted, we can be in the temple and we’ll still be diverted. And if we really don’t want to be diverted, we can read other books and they will maybe help us and not divert us.
It really is, you know, what’s going on inside here. That being said, one of the reasons, another reason why I wrote the book is because the same thing I’ve come across, I don’t want to go to an outside, you know, to a consultant or a counsellor or a coach who’s not a devotee. You know, I don’t want to talk to somebody who’s not a devotee.
I don’t want to talk to a therapist who’s not a devotee. So there is something to be said about that. At the same time, there are some values that they can offer and we got to know what they can offer, you know, and then what the limits are of what they can offer.
But one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because I feel like, you know, at least devotees can maybe get some kind of idea of what’s out there and what modalities might help for certain things that they might be experiencing. And, you know, they can feel that they have access through a devotee rather than, you know, just anybody. I don’t know.
Not that I’m a devotee, but I’m practising, I’m trying. So did that answer your question? Or is there more to it? Yes, definitely. So, you know, I also tackle this issue because I studied engineering and some of the engineering, what I learned, not my specialised engineering, but overall, I’m using that knowledge in Krishna’s service.
I learned English from a person who was a meat eater. But I’m using that in Krishna’s service. So somehow it seems that if somebody has learned something before they come to Krishna consciousness, that’s fine, use it.
But after you come to Krishna consciousness, don’t learn anything more. That doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. So there are two things over there.
The source, which I don’t find a very substantive argument because, you know, Chanakya Pandit also said that and Prabhupada quoted that you can take gold even from a filthy place. So even if somebody is that way, it doesn’t matter. But now, coming to the point of the content, that, see, there is a very clear understanding of the difference.
So if my hand is fractured, I obviously have to go to an orthopaedic surgeon, get it prepared, as you said, or if my car is damaged or whatever, I have to do that. But when it comes to the domain of self-care, that is, say, for example, when you consider especially the mind, not so much the body, body to some extent we understand that we have to go to a doctor. If I had to manage my finances, I may have to go to a financial expert.
If I have to decide where to invest or whatever. But when it comes to the mind, somehow, you know, in the material world, or I don’t know, in the outside world, people equate the mind and the soul and they reduce it to the mind. That means people consider the spiritual and the mental to be the same.
Most people will say, I want to feel spiritual. They basically want to feel good. So they equate the soul with the mind.
Whereas I, we in the moment go to the other extreme and equate the mind with the soul. Right. That means we think that by the spiritual practises, the mind should be automatically taken care of.
That would be really nice. So, at a philosophical level, somehow I feel that the acknowledgement that the mind is a distinct level of reality and it has to be addressed in its own way. That understanding, that acknowledgement is lacking.
And one reason for that is also that, say, we say that mantra, mantra, the literal meaning of the word mantra is that which frees the mind from anxiety, from misery. Yes. So, we expect at least from the very definition of the mantra, which is our core sadhana, we expect that the spiritual practises like chanting should relieve our mind.
And that’s why it feels a little bit, not little bit, for many people, it feels quite a bit of conflict when that which our spiritual wisdom is meant to address, if for that we need to go to somewhere else. Can I interrupt here? Yeah, please. Okay.
So, if mantra is going to free the mind. Okay. So, let me take the example of ghee.
So, when we heat the ghee, the heat is like the mantra. So, we’re heating the ghee. So, the heating of the ghee frees the impurities to come to the top.
Okay. Great. If we don’t scrape them off, where do we, where do they go? How do we get the purity? How do we get the pure ghee? We have to scrape them off.
So, we got to learn a little bit about the practise of once the impurities come up, like, where do we put them? What do we do with them? The mantra is bringing up the impurities. Great. But if we don’t scrape them off, and then we stir it up again, boom.
We have to learn the process of, you know, removing those impurities. Is that was that a appropriate example? Yeah, I like that. Feel free at any time again.
So, we were talking about judging. But also, in terms of devotees, I’ve seen that, especially by living in communities, devotees tend to judge others a lot in the community. How do we go around it? I’ve been a victim, and I’ve also been one of the causes also, I’ve also judged others.
So, how do we go around it? I mean, this is something that Well, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to go around it. But the nature of the mind is to judge. That’s part of its design.
It’s supposed to judge what’s hot, what’s cold, what’s dangerous, what’s safe, what’s edible, what’s not edible, you know, what’s clean, what’s not clean, you know, it’s meant to judge. So, it has a use. However, of course, just like anything in the material world, it gets carried away.
And then, not only our judgement of things, our judgement of ourselves, and our judgement of people becomes like an absolute. Now, you know, a chair is a chair, and it’s made of maybe wood and fabric, okay, maybe a little metal. It doesn’t have too much more than that.
A soul in a human being, we don’t even know who that soul is. We don’t know what their relationship with Krishna is, we don’t know who they are. And we’re kind of just judging by the outside package or some habits they may have from their past conditioning.
And when we put them in a box, we kind of encage them, we don’t allow them to outgrow that, you know. And we are not really associating with them, we’re associating with their conditioning, so we’re not really associating with them. And generally, we judge others, because we also judge ourselves.
And, you know, there’s a difference between self-awareness, and self-reflection, and self-judgement. There’s a complete different energy there. Judgement is a beating, like there’s something wrong with me, there’s something wrong with you.
Reflection, observation, as it might be, oh, that’s interesting. That didn’t seem to work. Or I wonder what they’re really trying to say.
So we can be curious. So that’s one of my favourite quotes. Rather than being judgemental, be curious.
Why did you say that? And what made you think that I was that way? When you said, and you called me this name, what was it that I did that had you say that? Because I’m interested to know if my action is bringing up that assessment in you, you know, maybe I need to look at how I was behaving. But if you don’t give me the specific behaviour, I can’t do anything with it. It’s just a label, which doesn’t give me any access to transform myself.
I can’t really take your feedback. So, you know, if we couch our judgments, not couch them, but if we expand our assessments into maybe feedback, well, I’m seeing this, I’m wondering where that’s coming from. Or is that what you meant to say? Or can you be a little more specific? We can get clarity, and then whatever our judgement, our mind was saying, we can see a wider, a broader perspective of it.
So our judgement is like a little straw that we see through. And when we look through our little straw, we only see a little bit. And then when we open up to curiosity, we can see a bigger picture.
Oh, I didn’t know that your father died. No wonder you’re so upset today. I didn’t know that this was happening at home.
Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know that. And oh, my gosh, I didn’t know that you were abused as a kid. I didn’t know.
Oh, my gosh, I didn’t. I had no idea what was going on in your world. And I didn’t know that this was your first lifetime in Krishna consciousness.
Oh, my gosh. And I didn’t know that you had all. We don’t really know.
But our judgement gives us the illusion that I know how Gore Kumar is. I know about him. He’s like this, this, and this.
Or I know how I am. I’ve been living with myself long enough to know I’m like this, this and this. Rather than I am and you are this, I have habits of getting excited when I talk, if you haven’t noticed.
So I have habits of getting excited when I talk. People could make another judgement and say another thing about that. We have habits and we all have habits.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it’s a lot of sense. I’m really enjoying this discussion, I have to say. That’s why I’m getting so excited.
Thank you. I would like to thank you for that question. Thank you for that answer.
You know, I would just like to relink this very beautiful analysis of judgement and curiosity back to the earlier point about self-help, what we’re mentioning. I feel that sometimes we, as human beings, we have an innate tendency to judge. And sometimes our devotional practises or our spiritual philosophy actually increases and even equips that judgemental tendency.
Say, if somebody is struggling to do a particular thing, then we have quick answers. You are in maya or you know, you are like this, you are like that, you are spaced out, you are this, you are that. And then we, in fact, what happens is, it’s almost like every devotee becomes like a, we could say like a free consultant.
They tell what is the diagnosis and they tell what is the prescription. You know, you are in maya, you know, chant more attentively or do this or do that. And then that actually, when that happens, we feel, we feel un-understood.
A word like that. Misunderstood. Yeah.
Not understood. Yeah. That’s true.
Misunderstood. But yeah. Misunderstood.
That’s better actually. We feel misunderstood. And then we also close up.
And then we feel a lot of loneliness also. We have certain needs which are not being addressed or whatever somebody is telling. It’s like, I have a disease and that prescription, I’ve already tried it.
It’s not working for me. Right. So, then it actually closes a person up quite a bit.
So, what do you think about this point that how do we use our Krishna conscious philosophy to move toward curiosity in our interaction with each other and not toward judgement? Any thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, there is there is a need in our judgement. So, there’s a couple of needs in our judgement.
First of all, we want to have some certainty, like we all like certainty that fulfils our need for security. We all have a need for security. Right.
So, we come upon the absolute truth. Oh, my gosh. I have the answers.
I have the absolute truth. It’s the absolute truth. And we like certainty and we like to be right.
We want to have the right answer. We don’t want to have the wrong answer. We don’t want to be wrong.
So, we have the absolute truth. So, that certainty and that absolute truth give us some security. I know.
Knowing and having that I know, I know what to do. I know what the answer is. I know what the right answer is.
It gives us a sense of security. So, that fulfils our need for security. So, that’s why we kind of sometimes are attached to, you know, that absolute truth in a certain way and it’s perceived in a certain way.
And of course, security is emotional. We can’t just let it go. So, that was your one point about judgement.
Now, you said people give, you know, free advice because we don’t like to see other people in pain and we don’t like to be in pain. Nobody wants to be in pain. So, as devotees, we don’t want people to be in pain.
And hey, I got the answer here. This is the absolute truth Krishna says. Srila Prabhupada says this is going to, you know, help you.
We don’t like to see other people in pain and we don’t like to be in pain but we become attached to quick fixes. Now, when we first come to Krishna consciousness and we first start chanting and we first start associating with devotees, oh my god, it’s a brand new world. We’re in the spiritual world.
It’s like, wow, you don’t meet people like this. You don’t come across energy like this. This is like, this is a whole new world and you’re like, this is awesome.
However, as we progress in Krishna consciousness, it’s not a quick fix. So, we come to Krishna consciousness, we’re in so much misery. We’re in misery.
We’re suffering, right? How many people come to Krishna consciousness because they’re suffering? I did, you know. Of course, I was looking for some knowledge and some information. I wanted the truth but so we come and we get some instant relief.
Oh my gosh, it feels so good to understand and to know what’s going on and know the truth. It feels so good but then Krishna says, well, there’s a little more work for you to do because Krishna consciousness is not a quick fix. You can’t paste Krishna consciousness on top of your conditioning.
You’re going to have to deal with that other stuff that’s going to come up when you turn up the heat. When you chant the mantra and turn up the heat, the impurity is going to come out. You’re going to have to do something with that.
So, the initial truth, it can’t necessarily, it’s not a quick fix. It’s an integrated process and we have to see, okay, I’m using a slotted spoon that might take off some of the bigger parts of the impurities of the ghee. But oh my gosh, then the little impurities are still in the thing.
Now I have to use a strainer. I might have to use a strainer. I might have to use different tools and I might not have all the tools I’m needing.
So, it becomes as we stay in Krishna consciousness longer, it becomes more challenging. We need to really see how we can in reality deepen our Krishna consciousness, not as a quick fix, not as a quick answer, but as an integrated process that actually really works. Now, I don’t know if I answered your question.
Yeah, I mean, you definitely addressed a lot of points. There is one issue that what we are saying is that all these are resources, if I understood you right, is that these are resources for applying the practises of Krishna consciousness. So, it could potentially it could potentially be a hazard.
It could potentially deviate us. But like you said earlier that anything can deviate us. If somebody wants to be deviated even within a temple without doing any other activity, they can get deviated.
Absolutely. So, now, if we say these are our resources for applying. So, does that mean that our own, say the movement and the tradition doesn’t provide these resources? Because again, going back to that earlier point about the mind, we tend to equate the mind with the soul, whereas outside people equate the soul with the mind.
So, now, could it be that, so I thought a little bit and I’ll share some of my thoughts and then you can add or clarify or correct whatever. I feel that we are, when we conceive of the tradition, we have like a very narrow vision of the tradition. The tradition was a community, tradition was a way of living and the tradition was practised, say, mostly in rural or small town kind of settings where people were together.
Now, we live in a much more fragmented society. The conflict between, I think that for each devotee, there are three conflicts that they have to negotiate. One is the conflict between us and the broader society around us.
Okay. This conflict is much bigger today than what was in the past. Aha, because it’s a bigger community.
Not just a bigger community, I would say that society is also much more materialistic now. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. If you look at the tradition, even when Chaitanya Charita Amruta, just 500 years ago, even if you consider that people were not worshipping Krishna, but still it says that they were all, there were people who were worshipping other devatas, they were reading the Bhagavatam.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It’s more degraded now. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
So, the second is that the conflict between the present me and the past me, that’s also very big because of which the kind of conditionings we have to deal with are far more complicated than what, let’s say, a person in the past from a purer background might have had to deal with them. Aha. Yeah, they lived a simpler life.
Yeah. And third is also that we, in one sense, when we are practising bhakti, especially if we are living in a community where we are practising bhakti, then it’s, I’m not going to say community, if you say if you’re living in a temple or close to a temple, then it’s almost like our multiple roles are mixed up. Is it our home or is it our workplace? It’s both.
Or is it our place of worship? Oh, yeah, that’s good, you know. Prabhupada also differentiated, Vrindavan is my, what did he say, Vrindavan is my home, Mayapur is my place of worship and Mumbai is my office. So yeah, beautiful.
So I think because of all these tensions, the problems with the mind are much more today than what they were in the past. And in the tradition also, maybe there were certain resources which were available, which we don’t know about now. Yes, yes.
Because, just to complete this point, when I have read a little bit about not just the Vedic tradition, but also other religious traditions, one of the things they said is that a large part of the wisdom was passed down through the oral tradition. And in the past, writing books was much more difficult, it was not so easy and a what happened was Prabhupada, in a sense, had to, in the written word, give not only what was traditionally given in the written word, but also what was taught through the oral tradition. Yeah.
And that oral tradition, Prabhupada did a remarkable job what he did in his books, but still oral tradition was huge. Yeah. And all those supports, which were there in society, which were like assumed to be available for practitioners.
Right. Now we are living in a place where they’re not available. Right.
If we could get all these self-care supports within the tradition, that’s fine. But if we don’t get it, we need to get it from somewhere. Right.
And wherever we get it from, we take it and move forward, move ahead. Ah, I really like that perspective that you really showed, like even previously, there was Varnashram Dharma, and there was more apprenticeship and training, and, you know, more role models. And now we’re more divided and separated and segregated and, you know, individualised and less even extended families.
And, you know, it’s a lot more stress on the individual to work on things. Another point is that our movement as it is, as Prabhupada brought it to us, is, you know, a little over 50 years old. It’s still a relatively new movement.
And so, you know, for us to like, we’re just now thinking about what to do about elder care, because now we have elders. And previously, we didn’t. Whereas now a lot of traditions, like the Christian and the Protestant church, they have elder care facilities, independent living facilities associated with the church.
You know, they have, you know, programmes for adolescents and teenagers. And, you know, it’s highly developed because they have so many more resources, and they have so much more time and actually experience about what’s working and what’s not working. And we’ve started, you know, building, expanding, making temples.
And we’ve done a lot of the external expanding, the external work to set up the foundation of the institution. And now it’s time to go in and do the internal work that maybe we didn’t have the time to do, and which is going to create sustainability. So, you know, when you make a structure, you know, it’s not just throwing something together, you want something that’s going to be sustainable.
So we have the big basic foundation, and we need to implement things that will make the process sustainable, will make over time, and it will allow devotees, you know, resources to address different issues that maybe we haven’t, as an institution, addressed. And I would say that that’s more institutional than traditional, because as an institution, we’re a fairly new institution. So does that make sense? Because, you know, you’ve got a tradition, but now you’ve got a new institution, which has to function in new ways.
So we’re kind of still just developing. Does that make any sense? I think that we sometimes conflate the institution with the tradition. The tradition is like the institution is the current expression of the tradition.
Yes. And the tradition has had many more resources, which we as an institution now need to create. Yes, yes, yes.
And relevantly, that has to be relevant to the time, place, and circumstance. Yeah, that’s true. You know, Prabhupada also, he did at one time talk about churning, now it’s the time to churn the milk.
We have enough devotees, now we need to churn the milk. I think that was in 1972. That was in 1972, he said that.
Yeah. So now, what he meant by that, and how it was going to be done, you know, he didn’t, at least from what I have read, he didn’t use specific guidelines, but he did recognise, that means, what his point was that what we have been doing right now is not churning the milk. There is something which we need to do to churn the milk, which is basically, you could say, like you said earlier, that there is the external expansion and there is, we could say, the inner expansion of our consciousness, which we need to, which I like the point of external and internal, because sometimes even for the external expansion of our movement, we draw on various resources.
If we are going to build a temple, we don’t just necessarily have only devotees, we have professional architects. Absolutely. So just as for the external expansion of our movement, we may draw resources from various places.
Yeah. And similarly for our internal expansion also, why not? Why not? Why are we going to have to reinvent? Do we have to reinvent the wall? Do we have to learn how to make computers ourself? Do we have to reinvent everything? People have already spent a lot of time and energy developing Krishna’s sciences. These are Krishna’s sciences.
These are Krishna’s resources. They’ve spent a lot of focus just on one aspect of it. Why don’t we take that and use it? It saves us a lot of time.
It saves us so much time. We don’t have to develop them from scratch. They’re already developed.
If they’re Krishna’s principles and Krishna’s sciences, computer science is Krishna’s science, we have no trouble using Krishna’s computer science. Was it a devotee that designed computer science? No, but these are all sciences. They’re actually all Krishna’s sciences.
I really like how you’re trying to integrate everything, Mataji. One of the challenges that I’ve faced when I’ve taken up this path of self-care, the question is, is this self-care going to help me nourish my devotion? That is the first question I get. And if I say, no, work on yourself, it will eventually help you nourish your devotion.
Then they become a little doubtful. Oh, if you’re not going to help me by chanting, then why waste time in self-care? So my question is, can I nourish my devotion more by practising self-care? Okay. Well, it is an integrated thing.
We are an integrated machine and everything is actually intimately connected. And so self-care is actually vital to our spiritual life, because what is the self we’re caring for? Who is the self we’re caring for? If we think the self is the body, we’re already in a misconception because it’s not just about the body. But this external is a temple, which is housing the soul and the super soul.
So will we not want to take care of this? Do we not take care of Krishna’s temples? Do we not clean Krishna’s temples? Did Lord Chaitanya not clean the Gundica temple over and over and over again? That’s the inner cleanse that it’s necessary for us to do. So self-care, this is what I write in my book. So I’m giving you we’re persons, we’re individuals, we all need some kind of care.
We need to eat, we need to sleep, we need care. So if we don’t care for ourselves, then what? Then somebody is going to have to take care of us. If I don’t prepare my meals, or I don’t go to the temple where there is a meal, or I don’t go to the store or go to the garden and pick something, if I don’t do anything to take care of myself, someone’s going to have to come and make food and put it in my mouth and care for me.
So if I don’t care for myself, then I’m kind of putting a burden somewhere on somebody else to care for me. So that’s one thing. And who am I responsible for caring for? I mean, Krishna did give me this soul, he made me as a soul, and he gave me this body.
In reality, this is the soul and the self that I am responsible for caring for. So if I don’t care for myself, I’m kind of putting a burden on somebody else to care for me. That’s one thing.
Now, another thing is, even in the aeroplane, they say, if the oxygen level goes down, put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you try to take care of somebody else. So why do they say that? Because we human beings don’t do that, we neglect ourselves. And then if you’re trying to take care of somebody else and fix somebody’s oxygen mask on, and it’s not working, but you don’t have your oxygen mask on yourself, you lose your oxygen, you lose your consciousness, and then you can’t, you die, and you can’t help the other person anyway.
What’s the point? So if I can’t take care of myself, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, what do I have to give to another person? You know, I’m distracting myself from my real job. So the problem is that devotees sometimes think self-care is selfish. They equate the two, but they’re completely not the same.
Selfish means I have no, I don’t have the exact quote, let me think. Selfish means I have no regard for others. Self-absorbed means, no, self-absorbed, selfish means I have no regard for others.
I can’t remember the other one. Self-something means I have no regard for myself. So it’s not that we have no regard for ourselves, or that we have no regard for others, but it has to be, it has to be integrated.
We can’t have no care for ourselves, and have any ability to actually care for others, because this is our job, this is what we’ve been given. So we need to care for both ourselves, and then we can, we have the facility and the capacity to care for others. It gives us a sustainable platform from which to work.
There’s more I put in the book, I think I put four points. I’m in the middle of editing it, and there’s so much, so I forgot exactly the four points, but it’s in there. You know how there’s a difference between being selfish and self-aware.
Yeah, self-aware, I think that’s what it is. Selfish and self-aware. Self-aware is, you know, you know, I, anyway, I can’t remember exactly, so I don’t want to get it mixed up.
Does that, did that help? Does that? Yeah, yeah. You have more? Go ahead. Like, my specific question is, like, will self-care eventually make us a better devotee? Like a better, like, a better devotee.
Okay, yeah. What’s gonna make us, we can’t make ourselves a better devotee. That’s Krishna’s job, but we can take our time and consciousness to help clear the impurities and not put more impurities in.
So, self-care is kind of continually cleaning, cleansing the Ganduja temple, scraping off the impurities. So, that’s what self-care is about. We’re caring for the self inside, ultimately, but we have to care for the body, too, because that’s where the self inside lives.
And if the mind is agitated, how is it going to sit and chant and receive the mercy of the Holy Name if it’s going all over the place? It’s not going to be able to hear and even receive the power of the Holy Name. So, we got to do something with it. We got to somehow deal with it.
So, if we don’t, it’s not a mechanical process, you know. The mechanics get us a certain level, but at some point it’s got to be integrated because it’s all connected. Yeah, I really like what you said about cleaning the impurities in our mind so that we can welcome Krishna in our minds, so that we can chant more peacefully.
And receive, receive and be present. Otherwise, our mind’s going to be here and there and here and there, worried about this, worried about that. We got to deal with that.
And our emotions, too. Our emotions are our attachments and our aversions. If we don’t deal with them, we are attached to this material world.
We’re staying here. You can’t, just like the monkey with the, what is it, the sweet balls or something inside the jar, right? You can’t, you know, you can’t get your hand out. You can’t get the sweet balls out unless you let go.
So, you know, we’re going to be stuck in this material world if we don’t learn how to let go of our attachments, which are all emotional. They’re emotional. So, we’re going to have to deal with our emotions somewhere along the line.
Was that helpful? Thank you. Yeah. You know, what I, what I’m realising increasingly is that maybe we have ourselves created a dichotomy where we have reduced the ambit of bhakti to certain things.
That means bhakti means the chanting the holy names. Bhakti means worshipping the deities. But bhakti is inclusive.
You know, anything that helps us in the service of Krishna is bhakti. Absolutely. Like Prabhupada, I remember in the Nilamrit, when the devotees had a lot of difficulty in getting cement for building the Vrindavan temple.
Finally, they got cement. There’s even Prabhupada was so careful. Prabhupada was standing there and he was monitoring how it’s happening.
And then he told the devotee to be very careful that don’t let the cement be stolen. And in Nilamrit it is written that Prabhupada was treating each cement bag as if it was like a gold bag. So, if counting cement bags can be bhakti, then say, trying to understand our emotions and trying to understand our needs and taking care of that.
Why can’t that be bhakti? Isn’t it? Yeah, because bhakti is not the externals bhakti is consciousness. Bhakti is our consciousness. So, we want to be able to see Krishna everywhere and in everything and how to utilise, you know, how to utilise.
Krishna made everything with the use. Now, we may not be utilising everything, but everything does have a use. So, are we using our body and our mind? Are we allowing our mind to use us? Are we allowing our emotions and our anger and our anarchist and our false ego to take over and control us? Or are we directing, if we don’t take responsibility and we’re not self-aware, we’re going to be on autopilot.
And if we’re on autopilot, you know, the automated systems of defence and false ego, they’re taking us away. We, our consciousness has to be invested in the whole process. Our consciousness has to be there.
It’s not a mechanical process. This is a very striking way of phrasing it, that if we don’t use our emotions, they will use us. I like the word, I like the specific word use over here, because use also means there’s yukta vairagya.
We talk about how use material things with detachment. So, we don’t want to get entangled by them, but we don’t also want to reject them. Just as you talked earlier about the computer being used.
So, similarly, if we consider our emotions are very, very definitive, because they are very important in shaping who we are and what we do. So, it’s almost like, if I don’t want to use a computer, I can choose not to use a computer. It may make my life a little difficult, but I can very well do without a computer.
A computer is external to me. It’s much more difficult for me to say, I won’t use my emotions. The emotions are already there.
And it is, if I don’t use my emotions, they’re not just going to stay silent. They are going to be there and they are going to act and they will make me act in unhealthy ways. So, in that sense, they will use me.
And can I bring a point in here about emotions? Yeah, please. Because it has a lot to do with compassionate communication. Emotions are information.
Emotions are feedback. Emotions are really wanting to show us there is some need inside of us that is not being addressed. Emotions are just like signals, like on the dashboard of a car.
The light flashes, you need some gas or you need some oil. If we don’t listen to the signals in our subtle emotional body, it’s going to end up being in our physical body, we’re going to be sick. And then the messages are going to be getting louder.
And if we neglect those messages that are coming through the feelings in our body, then we’re going to have a lot more work to do, which is really going to distract us from our Krishna consciousness. So, we want to take the information that the emotions are giving us. Oh, wow, there’s some need here that’s not being addressed.
How can I address this and work on this and take care of it? Okay. But if you don’t work on it, your homework piles up. And then after 30 years of being in Krishna consciousness, like me, boom.
Okay, here you go. Here’s your bill. You haven’t been paying your bills for 30 years.
Now, here comes the toll. Take care of it. So, yeah.
That’s so interesting because one of the core aspects of bhakti that we are taught initially is that you have to be humble and you have to be forgiving. Humble and what? And forgiving. You have to be very forgiving.
Uh-huh. Yeah. So, these are two things that we’re always taught.
But how can we distinguish between genuine feelings of humility within us and tendencies of beating up the self? So, when someone tells us that, we tend to neglect our needs and then we keep beating ourselves up. Oh, I’m not humble. I’m not humble.
I’m not forgiving. I’m not forgiving. Right, right, right, right, right.
Yes. So, how do we distinguish between the genuine humility and this feeling that we get? Okay, that’s a very good question. I would like to say humility is a very, very, very, very, very high virtue.
And I just start with trying to be honest. So, if we can’t be really honest, we’re not humble. So, I just try to be honest because humility is very a high virtue.
Now, in regards to self-beating, that’s one of the illusions. Self-beating, where does it say in scripture that we’re supposed to be so mean to ourself? If we’re mean to ourself, how are we going to be towards other people? So, you know, self-beating is actually a distraction. It’s a distraction from the real issue.
So, I made a mistake. Why am I beating myself up? Because I’m not pure. I made a mistake.
Well, I’m Jeeva Tatha. I made a mistake. Can I simply go, admit the mistake, clean it up and move forward? No, I can’t do that.
I have to hide the mistake. I’m too shameful. I feel really bad about myself.
That’s not humility. That’s shame. That’s not humility.
That’s shame. So, humility is a really high topic. Let’s work on honesty and just being honest.
And then the other one, so self-beating is really, it takes a lot of energy. So, just say you have this much energy in your hand, right? So, you can use this energy to produce some results positively, or you can use this energy against yourself. So, how does it feel when we beat ourselves up? We’re using our energy and then we’re feeling discouraged.
I’m so fallen. I’m so stupid. That’s low self-esteem.
That’s not humility. So, we’re using our energy against ourselves, pushing ourselves down. And then we have no energy to focus on chanting because we’re so busy feeling how awful we are.
And we’re not awful. That’s an illusion. We are part and parcel of Krishna.
We may have habits which have some flavour of awfulness to them, but we are not awful. And then there’s the other virtue of respect. This is a big one.
So, respect. Lord Chaitanya’s third Chikshastra prayer, right? We should offer all respect to others. I’m sorry, go ahead.
You’re talking a lot about humility, and I feel like we could maybe unpack this a little bit. Okay, let’s unpack it. Thank you.
Yeah. So, this is a lot to think about. So, first thing I felt was not the thought that came to me when Gorkham also spoke this, that actually, when we talk about humility, sometimes we talk about humility almost in a sense that we blot ourselves out of existence.
Humility doesn’t mean that I devalue myself or I deny myself completely. It means that something like I value something bigger than myself, that I want to serve Krishna. And for serving Krishna, I want to care for myself because it is I who am going to serve Krishna.
But sometimes humility acquires a very negative focus where if somebody has hurt me, insulted me, disrespected me, and then on top of that person says, you know, if you are humble, you wouldn’t feel hurt by that. Okay, I have a question. Yeah.
Who are they hurting? The soul doesn’t get hurt, it’s the body and the mind. I’d say the false ego. Okay.
They’re hurting the false ego. That’s not really who we are. They’re hurting our false sense of ourself.
And if we’re hurting our self, self-respect is taking care of our real self. We’re taking care of our real self. If we’re denigrating ourself, we can’t have self-respect for the soul and denigrate.
At the same time, it’s so conflictual and it just creates so much conflict, you know. So are you saying that by this analysis, I should not feel hurt? Or is this more like an intellectual analysis to decrease the amount of the hurt? Or what are you trying to say by this? Okay, what I’m trying to say is, if they’re hurting me, they’re not really hurting me, they’re hurting my false ego. So I need to look at what am I identifying with? If I’m identifying with my false ego, that’s actually my issue.
It’s my misidentification, it’s an apathy. So if I’m attached to an apathy that I am this, and they’re hurting that, and that’s not me, that’s a lie. So I’m mad at you for hurting something that’s not really me.
That’s my problem. That’s my misidentification. Does that make sense? That’s a very, it’s on a deeper level, but… Yeah, I know it’s a deeper level.
Somehow, this seems to almost run, I would say, contrary to all that you have been speaking till now. Okay. Because till now, what we have been speaking is, yeah, emotions.
Well, if I was really at the level where I could say that I’m different from my false ego, or I’m different from my mind, then I wouldn’t need all this. That’s right. So we need to do both things simultaneously.
It’s a two real process. So we need to say, okay, so when you said this, I felt hurt. You know, what did I need? So when we get to the need underneath the hurt, then we get more to the reality of the situation.
So they’re not, you know, they’re, whatever they’re saying is, is hitting an emotion, which has a need underneath it. Okay. So we want to look at what is that need underneath that, that they’re hitting.
That’s the important part here. And when we identify the need, that’s closer to who we are as a soul, whereas otherwise we’re defending our false ego, which is not who we really are. So we got to do both things at the same time, because you can’t really defend your false ego and identify your need of your soul simultaneously, because they have slightly different needs sometimes.
Does that make sense? It’s kind of got to be a two-way process. You got to go back and forth and back and forth. You want to give empathy and identify your feelings and your needs at the same time.
Sometimes you got to, you know, be straight, you know, you’re hurting me. Well, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati said, no one can harm you unless you harm yourself. So if I’m identifying with my false conception of who I am, I’m harming myself, and then I’m blaming you for harming me.
So I like this point of working on both levels. Yeah. So going back to an earlier point where you said, we can see emotion as information.
Yes. Yes. So if I go back to considering the mind as another level of reality, like the body.
Okay. If somebody while walking along, they’re walking the temple, they are going toward the but they’re stepping on my foot. Okay.
I feel pain. Okay. Yeah.
So then that pain is information that something is wrong. Yes. Now, similarly, if somebody is walking over me, not physically, but emotionally, emotionally, yeah, I feel pain.
Yes. So, so at one level, when they’re walking over my foot, I am the soul and I’m different from my foot. Yes.
Yes. So in a sense, I can say they’re not hurting me. But in another sense, they are actually hurting me.
Because ultimately, I have to use this body in serving Krishna. And if my leg is injured, I won’t be able to serve Krishna. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Or like another point is that not only will I not serve Krishna, probably somebody else will have to serve me. Somebody if I don’t take care of my needs, somebody else will take care of my needs. Absolutely.
Absolutely. So same way. Yeah, I’d like to say, I just want to complete my point.
That if somebody is hurting me, it’s actually they’re hurting my false ego, not me. So this kind of distancing should not mean that I’ll continue to let them hurt me. They’re saying somebody standing on my foot doesn’t mean that I’m not the body to let them stand on my foot.
Right. So we have to do the needful to protect ourselves. While at the same time, and we could say one part of protecting ourselves is say dealing with the external situation.
Another part of protecting ourselves also to deal with the internals by understanding actually, they’re not hurting me. But right now, because my consciousness is invested in my mind. So I both fear because, you know, we want to be able to take some personal responsibility.
So there is pain in the world. So somebody steps on my toe, there’s pain. Yes, you’re stepping on my toe.
Excuse me, you stepped on my toe. Oh, I’m sorry. But then there could be suffering.
You’re so unconscious. You’re so mean. I could add so much stuff.
And that’s suffering. You hurt me. You’re mean.
You don’t like me. You’re disrespecting me. I can add so many layers to it.
So there needs to be a little bit of emotions as information. But then we got to understand that sometimes that judgemental mind adds a lot of extra information, which is associated more with the false ego than the real situation that’s going on. So does that make sense? Did that help or did that make it? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. So you’re saying that emotions can both inform and misinform. So we have to find out what is the mind.
The mind misinterprets the emotion. So the emotion is really giving us the information of the need. And then the mind adds interpretations and assumptions and expectations and conclusions, which may have nothing to do with what’s really happening.
And that may be associated with the false ego. So we need to clearly see what is what. So you’re stepping on my foot.
Yes. You’re mean and nasty and disrespectful and that that’s another issue. So we want to be able to address both of those at the same time.
I wrote I wrote one of my books on quotes based on the Gita. You helped me to edit that also quite comprehensively. So there I think there’s one code that just came to my mind that I wrote intelligence means to understand how our mind makes us misunderstand.
That’s right. That’s a good one. Yeah.
So it’s a very beautiful point that so let’s say if I’m angry. So I could just if we apply that earlier point of judging ourselves and like you said, shaming ourselves. Yeah.
And if I’m feeling angry, that simply means I’m a short tempered person. I have so many anathas or if you feel greed or lust or whatever, just say, OK, I’m such a fallen person because I have this this particular anathas. But instead of that, OK, if I feel angry, I see that.
What what is it that is actually making me angry? And then what do I need? OK, so now here I might need I might need some consideration. I might need some some compassion. I might need some understanding.
But there are so many things that I might need. So what I’m sorry, I interrupted your thought. I interrupted you actually.
Sorry about that. But I think that if somebody if somebody disrespects me, well, isn’t it straightforward that my need is that you should respect me? So what is there to explore within that? OK, so if I’m angry, I may have a need for respect, but I might have a need for understanding it. It’s you know, you want to fine tune it, because if you just say you should respect me, you’re disrespecting me, you’re making an offence.
It doesn’t really get to the the the richness and the depth of really what’s going on inside of me and what’s going on inside of you. You know, you may have a need to be heard. And, you know, maybe I interrupted you and you feel like I disrespected you when actually I was.
Who knows? You know, so getting getting to the needs helps us to get more clarity. The mind tends to go to instant assumptions and conclusions based on our past, which may not actually be what’s happening right now. Hmm.
So, you know, we want to be present and clear what’s going on right now. And a lot of times when we’re upset with something, we think we’re upset because you stepped on my toe. But actually, I’m upset because five years ago, you screamed at me in front of people.
Three years ago, you took away my service. Two years ago, you called me a name. One year ago, you ignored me.
And now you’re stepping on my toe. So all that may be piled together in my conclusion about what happened when you stepped on my toe. So, yeah, I really like that answer, Mataji.
So I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about this. So when someone disrespects us, how do we forgive them? Like immediately our mind starts saying, you did this to me, you did this to me, you hurt me, you caused me pain. So how do we let go of that feeling of that emotion by forgiving them? I know that forgiveness is also talked a lot about in our scriptures.
But when it comes to practise, it’s actually extremely difficult. And I’ve seen devotees and myself struggle with it. So how do we learn to forgive? Forgive ourselves and forgive others.
Yes. Well, first of all, when I say you disrespected me, you hurt me, I am putting all the blame over on you. So first of all, whatever you did to have me say that you disrespected me.
Actually, what I’m trying to say is I have a need for respect. You may have had no intention of disrespecting me. Maybe your intention was to help me and you were just trying to give advice.
And the way you gave advice to me, I felt like you were disrespecting me. But that wasn’t your intention. So me saying you disrespected me is not necessarily the truth.
So when I look at it, taking personal responsibility, I can say when you said you need to look in the mirror at yourself, I felt hurt because I have a need for respect, you know, and understanding. Could you tell me what you meant when you said that? Yeah, you got some spaghetti on your face. Oh, I didn’t see that.
Thank you very much for the feedback. Now, people may say it with a certain tone of voice, which may remind us the way one of our parents talked to us. And we may still be emotionally scarred from the way we were treated by our parents.
And so if you say, you need to look in the mirror, just that tone of voice may trigger something in us, which adds up and connects with all those memories of when my father said to me, you need to look at yourself. And then I react to you from all that past. And it’s a lot more in the circumstance than that.
But if I say, when you said, you need to look in the mirror, I feel hurt. I have a need for respect. Would you be willing to tell me what you meant by that? Then the person would say, yeah, I’m just trying to help you.
I noticed you had some spaghetti on your face, and I wanted you to look in the mirror so you could clean it off. Well, thank you so much. And then I can separate those two incidences together.
And that helps us to move into forgiveness. Now, if we don’t see the whole picture clearly, we’re not going to be able to forgive because if I think and I’ve determined that you actually offended me, and you disrespected me, and you’re mean, how am I going to? I didn’t like that. But if I open up my mind, and I understand that maybe I have a conversation with you, and I get a little deeper understanding.
And maybe I have some empathy for myself, I have a need for respect. And I didn’t get respect when I was a child. And so I have low self-esteem.
When anybody gives me feedback or corrects me, I feel uncomfortable because I don’t feel very good about myself. So how can I be kind to myself? It takes a lot to really understand what’s going on inside there. It’s a lot of stuff is going on in the subtle level that we are completely unaware of.
And we’re not getting that information so that we can get a clear picture. So if I understand, well, I have some, you know, self-esteem issues. And when you said that, I felt really hurt.
And, you know, you know, is there another way you could say that? Or what were you trying to say? And, well, I was just trying to say this, and I didn’t really mean to hurt you. I’m sorry if I hurt you. And, you know, you could have like a nice discussion if you got some clarity about it.
You know, if you got some clarity about what was going on. Now, forgiving ourselves is really important, because if I don’t know how to forgive myself, I’m not really going to be able to forgive others. Who is it that’s the hardest person for us to forgive? Ourselves.
The hardest person to forgive. Yeah, you know why? Because when I see you doing something, oh my God, you’re such a hypocrite. Oh my God, that’s like, I’d never do that.
That’s disgusting. You know, but then when I noticed that I cheated, or I said something, or I said a little white lie inside, I feel it. Super Soul tells me, hey, you just told him not to do it.
You just did that. I feel shame, but it’s so embarrassing. Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did what I hate.
I hate when people do that, and I just did that. We got to cover that over, because they got it out here at you, and I can point it out to you, because that doesn’t feel so bad. But the reason it bothers me is because I got some of that in here.
So we can look at ourselves and see what my habit is, and what I do, and how I’m hypocritical, and how I’m out of integrity. If I can address that, and take responsibility for that, and forgive myself, I can forgive anybody, because it’s like somebody’s yelling at me, oh, and I never yelled at anybody in my life. I yelled at tonnes of people.
I hurt tonnes of people’s feelings. I would scream. So yeah, I hurt a lot of people when I was not conscious.
So yeah, I can see how people can do that sometimes. Oh my God, this person’s crying. I know how it feels to feel depressed.
I was depressed, and I couldn’t get myself out of it. Some people get in those stuck places, and then the best they can do is vent out at somebody else. So if I can have some understanding of myself, that I’m doing the best that I can, everybody is doing the best that they can.
It’s not that everybody’s best is the same, but everybody is doing the best that they can with what they’ve got, with where they are, with what they understand, with what they’ve integrated, and it’s not my job to change them. It’s my job to understand me, and when I understand me and forgive me, I can forgive anybody, because what everybody has done I’ve done it too. I’ve done it.
Somewhere in my life, I’ve done it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even recognise it. I wouldn’t even be able to see it.
I would be naive to it, right? I wouldn’t be able to see it. If I can see it, it means I have some experience of it. Does that make sense? Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Thank you. That’s a lot too. Now, you’re sharing a lot of wisdom here with us.
I feel that many of these concepts could be further unpacked. So yeah, when you said about exploring our needs, you also talked about earlier about a word say something like self-absorption or self-obsession, or there is something in the narcissism. So how do we decide that when I’m taking care of my needs, is it actually I’m addressing my needs or I’m simply pampering myself? So that can happen at a physical level also.
I think that can easily happen at the emotional level where we start, where self-care becomes a excuse for self-indulgence. Yes, it could. Anything can be misused.
Self-care can be misused. Renunciation can be misused. Detachment can be misused.
Attachment can be misused. It can all be misused. Every single quality can be misused.
It can all be misused. So it takes something to get clarity on what’s going on inside of us. And it takes practise and presence.
So like the things that we’re talking about here, you know, we can talk about them and we can give answers, but then actually applying them as a practise. So if you can, just because I’m answering so many questions and my mind is kind of racing, re-presence me to your question again so I can direct my thoughts specifically on the question that you asked. Can you ask it in another way? Are you asking this to me or are you saying that we should ask this to others? No, no, no.
I’m asking you right now in the reality. Ask me your question again so I can re-presence myself. Okay.
So how do I know whether I am going from self-care towards self-indulgence? I am going towards the self-absorption, narcissism. Okay, okay. So this is the beginning of spiritual life.
It’s called honesty and integrity. It’s called honesty and integrity. So Krishna’s in our heart.
So we can judge, we can assess, is this helping me to remember Krishna more? Is this helping me to be compassionate to others and caring to others? Is this helping me in my service mood or am I being distracted? We could ask, is this the best I can do right now? Sometimes there might be times when we’re going through some trauma and we may need to take more time and care with ourselves and we may have to be a little more absorbed in ourselves. That may be there in the beginning, just like a child needs more care when they’re younger and as they get older they can start to take care of themselves. So we just have to keep asking ourselves and Krishna, you know, what do I need? What’s an appropriate way and a favourable way for me to fulfil this need? We can ask ourselves, am I overindulging? Am I pampering myself? And we can just ask ourselves those questions and we’ll get the answers if we ask.
If we really want to know, we’ll get the answer. But if we’re attached, I want to eat a chocolate cake every day and we’re attached to eating our chocolate cake every day, we are going to give all the justifications why we have to have it. But if we’re not attached, if we’re saying, okay, Krishna, I love chocolate cake and there’s a chocolate cake there, so do I really need to eat chocolate cake every day or is it just self-indulgence? And if I’m really detached and I really want to know what Krishna wants me to know, then he’ll say, come on, look at, you know, you’re gaining weight, your stomach’s hurting, you know, you just got a blood test and you don’t have enough protein in your blood.
Come on, let’s be real here. So if we’re attached in any way, our ability to ascertain if we’re being self-indulgent or self-aware will be clouded. So integrity and honesty, self-honesty, those are the first steps we stand on to really get our grounding.
If we can’t be honest with ourselves and we can’t be in integrity, you know, then we’re not going to have the clarity to be able to ascertain deeper questions about, am I pampering or not pampering? Now, sometimes, you know, when we’re going through a stressful time in our life, sometimes we need to bury our pain and we do it by eating. It’s a coping mechanism. Sometimes if we’re in extreme anxiety, somebody just died or we can’t process, maybe we stop eating, maybe we sleep for three days because we can’t process it, you know, so it can be different every day.
What might seem like is self-indulgence at a certain period of time, it could just be a way of dealing with grieving. It could just be dealing with the way of like, you know, depression or stress. So, it’s not a once-over answer that I am, I am this, I am self-absorbed.
Are my habits and my practising practises kind of pulling me towards self-absorption or are they helping me with my self-development and self-realisation and connection with Krishna? If we really want to know and we really want to connect and we’re really asking those questions, we’ll be able to get the clear answer. It really depends on our consciousness and if we’re not ready to hear those answers, we won’t get those answers because we’re not ready to hear them and we’re not ready to take them on. Does that make sense? So, sometimes, maybe we will.
When you say that I’m not ready to take it on, what does that mean practically? Then, what should I do in that situation? You just do the best you can and maybe the best you can at that point in time is eat a whole chocolate cake because I am so frustrated and so angry, you know, I want to kill myself. I’m going to eat this chocolate cake. Well, I’m going to eat the chocolate cake because it’s better than killing myself.
So, in that day, that might be the best you can do, right? You know, it’s better to eat the chocolate cake than kill yourself, right? That’s a better option but that doesn’t mean that I eat the chocolate cake every day. That means maybe I need to seek out some support and some counselling because I’m wanting to eat chocolate cake every day because I want to kill myself every day. Maybe I need to get a bigger support system.
We take things as information, not as a judgement that I’m self-absorbed. My coping mechanism of eating chocolate cake one day, two days, three days, okay, that might be okay. But if I’m doing it habitually and it’s becoming an addiction, I need to look at other support systems because that’s not just a coping mechanism.
That is not fully helping me. And if I really want holistic health, spiritual care, I’m going to need to look at a bigger perspective. Does that make sense? Okay, so it’s not one answer.
If you’re saying that, no, I’m just trying to try to see how it would apply practically. So even if I’m going towards self-obsession, I shouldn’t make that as a reason for condemning myself. So instead of that, okay, what need is not being fulfilled because of which I’m going toward that becoming self-obsessed? Right.
And honesty is there. It seems like I’m getting a little obsessed. That honesty right there can give you a protection.
Seems like I’m getting a little obsessed with eating chocolate cake every day. That doesn’t really… See, I was talking about obsession in a different sense, or maybe you are giving example which I am not connecting. See, there is one thing, obsession with physical things, like say chocolate cake or many things like that.
But I’m talking about obsession with self-care. That means I start becoming obsessed with, you know, what am I feeling right now? Why am I feeling this? And what is going on over here? So how much can that become an obsession and how? So you are saying you’re using chocolate cake as an example for obsession with self-care also. Is that right? Yeah, well, anything can be an obsession.
Anything. Austerity can be an obsession. I can be obsessed with fasting.
I can be obsessed with, you know, I can be obsessed with anything. I can be obsessed with looking like a great devotee. You know, there are so many different types of obsessions.
And some of the more good-looking obsessions are harder to distinguish than the, you know, I can be obsessed with profit, adoration, and distinction, but I’m doing a lot of service and I look really good here. But, you know, so, you know, people don’t necessarily see that I’m obsessed with profit, adoration, and distinction, and I might be. So we gotta be able to be honest.
As much as we can be honest with ourself, to that degree, we can clear things away. When I can’t be honest, if I’m in denial, I’m not going to go too far. I’m not going to go too far.
If you’re even able to ask the question, am I getting obsessed with myself? If you’re even able to ask that question, that’s a certain level of consciousness and self-awareness. A lot of times, we’re not even that self-aware to ask, am I being self-obsessed? I don’t even see it. Yeah.
So, you know, honesty is a ground level thing. If I can be honest and get out of my denial of what I’m doing, that gives us a lot of space to, you know, move forward. If I can be honest, that’s like the ground that we can stand on.
But it’s sometimes hard to be that honest. We’re used to hiding because we feel shameful. I talk about this in my book a lot.
So there could be hiding and there could be neglecting. And quite often, neglecting can be, we can do it in various ways. So I could say that I can become obsessed with my externals so that I can dodge dealing with my internals.
And similarly, the opposite can also happen. I can obsess with my internals so that I can dodge dealing with my externals. So after I do my internal homework, I may also have to do some outer work.
Yeah, I can be neglecting that. Right. Exactly.
Anything’s possible. All those scenarios are all possible. That’s why we have to be self-aware.
We have to be self-honest because it’s not the same for anybody. It’s not the same. We deal in different ways.
We have different levels of coping. We have different strengths. We have different weaknesses.
We have different propensities. It takes self-honesty. That’s like ground level.
We haven’t really gotten anywhere. But, you know, just being on the ground is a great place to start. Beautiful.
So it’s different. There’s no one size fits all answer. Maya is so integrally diverse.
She knows how to get each one of us in different ways. And she may get us in opposite ways. But it’s her same energy.
Just like energy can be heating or cooling, right? She knows exactly how to trick us. But if we’re honest, then we can deal with it. And if we’re not, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not going very far.
We’re kind of stuck. Does that make sense? So by honesty, yes, definitely makes sense. So by you have mentioned honesty a little bit.
I mean, several times you mentioned it. So I would maybe I would like to articulate what I understand by honesty and then you can elaborate. So honesty would basically mean that we acknowledge whatever we are feeling or whatever is going on without putting any label on it.
So for example, say if I wake up in the morning and I don’t feel fresh, the alarm has gone up, I meant to wake up, I feel very tired. So honesty would mean at one level, I am feeling tired. But this tiredness could just be the because of the laziness that is there initially when we wake up.
This tiredness could be because I slept very late yesterday and I need more rest. This tiredness could be because I had a bad night, I had bad dreams. And that’s why although I slept adequate time, I didn’t get rest.
That tiredness could be because maybe I’ve fallen sick. And that’s why I’m feeling like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So honesty would mean that first, like say, I non-judgementally acknowledge whatever I’m feeling. And then after that, I try to analyse it. Okay, I’m feeling like this.
Why am I feeling like this? But if I just say, oh, I’m such a lazy person. I don’t wake up whenever I set an alarm, I don’t wake up. Right, right, right.
That is actually, I may think that I’m being strict with myself, but I’m honest with myself. That’s a deep level of honesty. Actually, we don’t usually get to that deep of a level of honesty until we start with integrity.
Actually, integrity is kind of first before we get to that deep of a level of self honesty. But yes, that level of self honesty is so important because it’s like, wow, why am I feeling tired? I got eight hours sleep last night. I should feel fresh.
Is this a bodily pain? Am I getting sick? Oh, my throat hurts a little bit. Maybe I’m getting sick. That’s being really understanding what’s going on or, oh no, I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
No wonder I’m feeling tired. Do I want to get up? Yes, because I have a lot that I want to do. And if I need to take a nap, then maybe I’ll take one a little later.
So it’s just being really honest. But integrity kind of helps us. Integrity is what helps me to kind of keep a balance.
So in spiritual life, we want to keep balance, right? And it’s so hard to balance everything. So what helps me to keep balance is integrity. So integrity is when I honour my word.
So if I can keep my word to people and keep my integrity, then I can keep my balance. But if I tell you I’m going to be on this podcast and then I forget about it or I schedule something else or I’m not present or I don’t communicate with you, that’s out of integrity. So just keeping the bare level integrity, keeping our schedules, keeping our promises, even keeping our promises to ourselves.
I promised myself that I would do my exercise for 15 minutes every day. If I don’t keep my word to myself, how am I going to keep my vows to Krishna? You know, it’s all connected. So integrity helps us to keep a balance and it helps us to let us know when, oh, maybe I’m taking on too much.
I’m breaking my word right and left. I’m like, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I can’t think straight.
I’m starting to yell at people. You know, this isn’t what I usually do. I’m feeling stressed.
You know, it’s like I’m out of balance. I need to get myself in balance and give myself a little self-care so I can function more efficiently because it’s not efficient for me to run around like this and be treating devotees like this. I need to take on less so I can do it more qualitatively.
So that’s integrity and that helps us to keep balance and it helps to take us to deeper level honesty and it’s kind of a little simpler because sometimes that level of honesty that you were talking about, that takes a lot more self-reflection, like internal self-reflection, whereas integrity is, I said I was going to do this and I didn’t do this. So it’s like a little bit more easier to see when I’m keeping my integrity and when I’m breaking it. Does that make sense? Beautiful.
So I never thought of integrity in this clear terms. There’s more, there’s more to it too. So if, of course, of course.
So just okay, while I gather my thoughts, Gaur Kumar Prabhu, do you have anything to add? Yeah, so I mean, I really appreciate how you put humility at such a high bar and you said focus on honesty and integrity. I really like that. And I also like how you brought forgiveness to being empathetic.
And I really appreciate that as well. So in one sense, I’m understanding that we should take it step by step at our level and not jump into these big things that we cannot even reach. Exactly.
That’s what I’m getting. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
And we got to take it at our pace. I keep writing in my book, we’re on a long distance marathon. This is not a sprint.
This is not a race. I got to get there first. This is a marathon.
I got to pace myself or I’m not even going to make it to the finish line. So we got to pace ourself. It’s got to be sustainable.
We got to make sure we got enough water. We got to train ourselves to work ourselves up to the marathon. Some days we train, some days we take a break.
So it’s important to take step by step and we can appreciate step by step. We can appreciate each step. We’re not in a race.
We can appreciate, wow, this is what Krishna gave me today. How can I serve Krishna today? And this is the service Krishna gave me today. And that’s what I did.
And I did my best. And today is complete. And it was a beautiful day.
And here’s my offering. Thank you, Krishna. And I can feel complete in that day.
It’s not like I’m not going to feel complete until I get back to Godhead. Well, I might be pretty frustrated and agitated between the time of now and when I go back to Godhead. And if I’m frustrated and agitated and patient, I may not get there or it’s going to take me a lot longer to get there.
Step by step with self-honesty, self-integrity will eventually take us where we want to be. One step at a time. Yeah.
Then there’s more. But it starts and integrity is kind of easy because it’s like I give my word and I keep my word. It’s something specific and it’s doable and it’s measurable.
So it makes it a little easier for us to actually see if we kept our word. Self-honesty can be a little, well, I’m being honest. I’m telling you, you’re a jerk.
You know, I’m being really straightforward with you. You’re a jerk. I think I’m being honest, but maybe that’s not the fact.
The fact is, you know, I’m upset with you because of something you said to me. And that’s more of the truth. So integrity really is a little bit more manageable and measurable.
So that’s why it’s a little easier. And that’s why we start with that. If we can’t do that, we’re not going to be able to do the deeper levels of self-honesty.
Now, we really maybe we can have another podcast where we go deeper into these subjects. There’s a lot to discuss. Oh, my gosh.
I would like to ask one last question and then Gokumar will ask anything more. Can do that. And then I’ll try to summarise and you can use some concluding words.
So I’m trying to make a mental picture of these three things, humility, honesty and integrity. So and you said that now I understood clearly about honesty and integrity, how integrity, because it is it is more connected with our external commitments. It is relatively easier to gauge whether we are having integrity or not.
And how by that, once we start at least becoming observant to that level, eventually we can also be honest with ourselves. Now, I also understand, say, how honesty and humility are connected in the sense that if instead of artificially saying that, you know, I should be humble and I should not feel hurt by this person, whatever they have spoken, I honestly acknowledge what I am feeling and then try to look at my needs. So now, but how exactly is a humility and integrity related to that? So, OK, I don’t even really talk about humility.
Like I say, humility is such a deep or high or advanced quality. I just work on being honest. If I can be honest, you know, at deeper levels of honesty, integrity and honesty.
That’s where I am right now. I can’t really talk about humility because it’s it’s it’s so vast and deep and it’s tricky. And there’s so many false versions of it.
And if I say that I’m humble. I’m probably proud that I’m humble and so that I’m not humble. So humility.
I don’t even really I can’t talk about that. I don’t I can’t talk about humility, but I can talk about honesty and integrity. So I can’t talk about humility.
Sorry, it’s too deep of a topic. Yeah, well, I appreciate your humility and not wanting to talk about humility. It’s not humility, it’s honesty.
It’s really honesty. I can’t really talk about it because it’s too deep. But integrity is measurable and honesty is observable.
Humility is Krishna’s grace. So, you know, I can say that much about it. Integrity is measurable.
Honesty is observable. We can observe it inside. And humility is Krishna’s grace.
How’s that? Can you repeat? Integrity is integrity is measurable. It’s measurable. We can measure it by external standards.
Honesty is observable, like we can really, you know, we can detect a little deeper when we’re being more self-honest. It’s observable and it has different levels of depth to it. Humility comes by Krishna’s grace.
We can’t we can’t make ourselves humble. Okay, that comes by Krishna’s grace. That’s why I can’t talk about it because I can’t do it.
It’s just only by Krishna’s grace. Does that make sense? True. Gopal, do you want to ask anything? No, I mean, thank you for answering.
Wow. Wow. It was so fun to be with you.
You guys are so interactive and so involved and you tolerated my excited conversation. Not just excited, it was illuminating. Usually at the end of the talk, I try to summarise.
I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do today because we went over a lot of territory. But yeah, I try to do something. It’s all summarised in my book.
All of this and more is inside both of my books. So when is it likely to come out? Well, you know, it’s in the editing stages, but I don’t know exactly. It’d be nice if it could be published and distributed, you know, by the end of the year.
It would be nice if that could happen. I just don’t know because there’s a lot of things that I don’t know about. But I’m in the final stages of doing my edits, you know, and then, you know, I have the charts and I have the pictures.
I don’t have the cover yet. I don’t have all the, you know, reference. So there’s still some work to do.
So then, you know, so let’s say maybe, you know, by the end of this year, it could be fully out, maybe before that, maybe by the end of the summer. Hmm. Yeah, whatever Krishna wants.
Let’s see. Let’s have some blessings from the devotees. Yeah, which is you can you can really blessing them through the books.
But also, I believe you have a website where if some devotees want to contact you, they can contact you. It’s a heart connection. So I mentioned that also in the description.
So you are available for devotees to if they want to consult you. Sometimes if I’m trying to finish the book, then it gets a little overwhelming. I am going to be doing a course on compassionate communication in like maybe a month or something like that.
And it’ll be available to weekend course. So maybe I can put that on my website. So if people want to check, they can do that course with me online.
So that would be that would be helping them in another way. That’s a group help. And then I’ll be doing some other courses.
But you know, they can people can contact me. I just have to see in integrity what I can actually do. If I say I’m going to finish the book, then I can’t take on too much because that would be out of integrity because then I can’t really finish.
So I have to balance my integrity. So but they can, you know, look at my website and see, you know, by the time they look at it and they need it, you know, maybe I’ll be more free as soon as I finish these books. I’ve got one more book on the burner, too.
Sorry, I didn’t tell you about that one. Oh, anyway. Yeah.
So one more. And then that’s it. OK.
Yes. I’m sorry. So please summarise.
Yeah. So thank you. So I’ll put the description of the website below.
And many devotees may want to connect with you. So I think we discussed broadly on the theme of the role of self-care in Bhakti. They would say that overarching theme.
And then you started with your journey where you found that the standard prescriptions were which you followed diligently for more than two decades, almost three decades. They weren’t they weren’t working and you were depressed and the intense situation. And that’s when you prayed to Krishna for guidance and to say compassionate communication and other resources.
You learn them and now you are sharing them with others. And then a major part of the discussion, I think we discussed three main topics subsequently. One was do devotees need self-care at all? So we talked about isn’t our isn’t Bhakti alone enough? So then there are two, three points in that.
Now, what does Bhakti mean? Now, Bhakti is it just the devotional activities or Bhakti’s ambit is broader to include include other activities that help us to practise Bhakti. So then I start I talk show that that Venn diagram of textual, traditional and application of spirituality. Yeah.
And the idea is that just as we use various resources for doing our outer services to Krishna, if we use a computer, we want to fix it, you go to expert. So then why can’t we use various resources for doing our inner work in Krishna service? So then within that it is that there’s this confusion, say in the material world, people equate the soul with the mind. Those who are like spiritually inclined, but we might equate the mind with the soul.
So we may think that the that the spiritual practises will automatically take care of our mental needs or our emotional needs. But just like the body is a genre in itself and the body is fractured, we have to go to a doctor. Similarly, our emotions also, we need to take care of them.
And rather than seeing that it could become obsessed and that can divert us from Bhakti. But even by doing core devotional practises, we can get diverted from Bhakti. So if we are, if we are earnest, and then you talk later about if you’re honest, then we will avoid getting obsessed and we will use these for enhancing our service to Krishna and enhancing our developing our relationship with Krishna.
Then you said you talked about how that was one one theme about why self-care is important. And then in self-care, we discussed about two things. One is judgemental attitude.
And then within that also discuss about humility, further humility, honesty and integrity. So judgemental attitude, the way we avoid that is by seeing that underlying those judgments, whether it is we passing it on ourselves or others passing it on ourselves, we treat them with curiosity rather than judgmentality. So, you think I am like this, what made you think like that? You ask a question like that.
Or even if we do something which is wrong, rather than beating ourselves up, you have quite a graphic example. If I have some energy, I use it to beat myself. I can’t do anything else with that.
So that shift from judgement to curiosity is a brilliant, I think, brilliant takeaway from this talk, apart from many others also. But curiosity means, OK, why, why, why did I do that? Or why do we go below the labels to understand our needs and interests? So rather than if I get angry, I’m simply a short tempered person or this person is such a arrogant, disrespectful person. Right.
What is my need exactly? When I say respect, respect is like a very broad word that I want to acknowledge, I want to be understood, I want to be, what is it actually? So the idea of emotions as information can, by that we not only, we are not suppressing it, but we are not even pandering to it. We’re actually following where they can lead us. And then within that, we discussed a lot about this, that.
But the next point was about humility, honesty, integrity. So you said that humility is a very high virtue. We can start with honesty.
And that means if I feel, if somebody has disrespected me and I feel hurt by that. So humility doesn’t mean that I try to simply efface myself out of existence and think that I don’t matter at all. After all, it is I who am going to use, I am going to serve Krishna.
So like if somebody is stepping on my foot, then I can’t just wish that away. So there is outer work and inner work. Inner work is if I feel hurt, if somebody has insulted me, I understand that I am different from my false ego and I situate myself, myself as separate from the false ego.
So then that particular insult will not hurt that much. At the same time, the outer work also required. It’s not that in the name of inner work, we just take abuse by others.
We also deal with it externally. So both are required, inner and outer work. And then within that, so it begins with honesty.
And honesty also is sometimes difficult. So we could say humility is at a high pedestal. Honesty is a little lower.
And what is much more accessible for us is integrity. Integrity means if I make some commitments, do I keep them? Whether commitments to others and could be to myself. And when I don’t keep them, then again, rather than beating myself up, I evaluate.
Maybe it is because I’ve taken too many things or because I’m not equipped to do these things. So you start with integrity, then gradually we can move towards honesty. And so you said integrity is measurable.
Honesty is observable. And then humility will be something which will come by Krishna’s grace. It is receivable or something like that.
It’s receivable. I like that. I like that.
That’s really cool. Yeah. And then you talk about, can we get into, say, obsession about self-care? You said obsession about everything is possible.
It could be. So rather than putting self-care into an entirely different category and being paranoid about it, we see self-care like everything else. I can get obsessed about eating delicious prasad.
I can get obsessed about how people are treating me. I can get obsessed about even, you said, there can be like prestigious of obsessions. I can get obsessed about austerity and that will give me prestige.
So obsession is possible anywhere. So we are cautious about it. And I think you talked about, you concluded talking about how your book is going to come soon and you also have this course where devotees can connect with you.
So did I, are there any things you would like to add as a concluding message? How did you remember all that? That’s pretty cool. Thank you. So it is wonderful.
Thank you for your time and your lively, cheerful spirit. It brings this whole podcast to life. Well, I don’t know.
It’s really fun to talk about these things because they’re really relevant and we really are alive and real and we really want to experience that. And so these things can help us to go to those places. But it’s funny because every time I talk, I say something new and I give new examples.
And now I think maybe I should add that to my book. Yeah, I think every book is like an evolving process. I read about authors.
I read one book on writing and that even the award-winning books are simply the last drafts of manuscripts that were dragged by the publishers from the authors. Yeah, yeah, I gotta get, I gotta stop somewhere. I’m getting to that stopping point.
Enough is enough. But thank you so much for your time and your excitement about this topic. And if there’s anything I can do to serve you, please let me know.
Thank you so much. We will be honoured to have you again in future sometime and we can go deeper into some of the subjects we have discussed. Okay.
Yeah. And then if you can send me the link to the recording, that would be cool. I could maybe put it on my website, huh? Yes, definitely.
After you put it out. Yeah. Yes.
Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you very much for sharing your wisdom so generously and so generous. It’s just you use the word fun, you know, it was like very serious stuff we discussed, but the way you discussed it was very light, very lightheartedly and cheerfully. I think that’s also an art because otherwise it can become very, very, very disconcerting.
Yeah, well, you alerted me when I started to become a little disconcerting there. When I started to become a little heavy, you alerted me right there and said, wait, let’s get a little heavy. You helped me to lighten up.
And I’d like to thank Gaur Kumar also for sparing his time and being with us today. Yeah. I think you added a lot of good questions as well as you provided us your associations.
Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you so much.
I look forward to meeting again.